Passionate Choice

Chapter 1.6

   At the end of half an hour, the length of time the air in their tanks lasted, they all made for the surface and the bright, hot sunshine. Heather was waiting for them on the afterdeck and, as soon as he had shed his diving gear, she accosted Keith going with him up the steps to the wheelhouse. Gary, a cheery-faced tiong man of about twenty-four who had long blond hair and a New York accent, showed Selena to a cabin in which she could change out of her wet swimsuit and into her other clothes. When she was dry and dressed she left the cabin and made her way again to the foredeck. Looking back and up at the wheelhouse as the ship was steered slowly away from the reef she noted that Heather was still with Keith, talking to him as he steered, asking him questions, no doubt, about his family and possibly asking him also if he had ever met herself before. Selena could only hope that he would be as reticent about himself with Heather as he had always been with her.

   "So what do you think of Walker?" asked Ben coming to join her at the rail.

   "Think of him?" she exclaimed. The question surprised her. She had expected Ben to ask her what she thought of the wrecks they had seen. "What do you mean? Why should I think anything about him?"

   "I just wondered what your opinion of him was after that little fracas between him and Heather this morning. I thought he was rather insolent."

   "He seems to be making up for his insolence now," Selena replied, glancing up at the wheelhouse. Heather appeared to be steering the ship under Keith's supervision. "I think he was being very honest this morning. He has..." she broke off quickly realizing that she had been about to betray to Ben that she knew more about Keith than would have been possible after having only just made his acquaintance. She had been going to tell Ben that Keith had a reputation for speaking his mind directly and often forcefully. "I mean," she went in quickly, "he seems to be straightforward and knowledgeable."

   "I hope you're right about him making up for his insolence to Heather. In spite of the way she speaks and behaved she is very sensitive, specially about Louis's reputation as an underwater archeologist. I hope we'll be able to prove that the earlier wreck was a Spanish galleon called the Santiago as Louis guessed it is. She will be mortified if he was wrong. She's spending a lot of money on this little private expedition of ours."

   "All to vindicate Professor Langston's reputation," murmured Selena. "She must have been very fond of him."

   "It was a second marriage for both of them. Her first husband was an extremely wealthy man. He bought land on this island and developed the Pelican Roost resort club for his wealthy friends to stay in. He was much older than she, apparently, and when he died he left everything to her."

   "Professor Langdon must have been a lot older than her too," said Selena thoughtfully, remembering the silver-haired American archeologist who had visited Ben only a year ago to talk about the Santiago, just before he had been killed quite tragically in a car crash. "She must be about forty and he was sixty-six. Old enough to be her father."

   "People might say that about you and me, when we marry," said Ben quietly. "Will you mind?"

   "I'll try not to," she replied lightly, uncomfortably recalling the taunt made by her sister, Aubrey, when she had told her of her acceptance of Ben's proposal. 'But he's old enough to be your father. He must be forty-five or more. And he's been divorced, hasn't he? Wasn't there a story going about that his ex-wife divorced him on the grounds of mental cruelty?' Selena has then defended Ben and had told Aubrey that his ex-wife hadn't appreciated his fine mind and his scholarly pursuits in the way that she did herself but Aubrey had given her a mocking glance and remarked: 'Oh, in that case you and he are well matched. You won't object when he goes off to poke about old ruins and wrecks instead of making love to you. You won't mind because you're so cold and passionless yourself.'

   "I can't help wondering though, Selena, why no other man has snatched you up and married you," Ben's murmuring voice broke into her thoughts. "There must have been others who have been attracted to you."

   He was probing, delicately it was true, into her past and she wondered whether now was the time to admit to him that she had met Keith Walker over four years ago in Nassau and had fallen in love with him so deeply that for nine months she had pushed aside her ambition to become an archeologist and had lived with him on his sailing yacht Nightingale, cruising about the islands of the Caribbean.

   "Supposing there was someone," she said slowly. "Supposing I'd had a lover and had lived with him for a while. What would you think? Would you still want to marry me?"

   "A hypothetical question?" he queried, somewhat amused. "I can't believe you would ever do something like that. You're too reserved, too intellectual, too wholesome..."

   "Oh, Ben," she interrupted him laughingly. "You make me sound like a heroine out of Jane Austen novel. But I'm not. I'm real. I'm a real woman with blood in my veins, with longings and desires as well as ambitions. Now, tell me, if you knew that I have lived with another man for nearly a year without being married to him what would you think?"

   The engines were slowing again and the ship was turning towards the jetty. The beach belonging to the resort shimmered white in the sunlight and behind it the dusty stern palms and casuarinas cast deep dark shadows around the plain white buildings.

   "Ah, we're nearly there," said Ben.

   "You haven't answered my question," Selena reminded him.

   He frowned at her, rubbing the top of the rail with both hands uncertainly.

   "Selena, why...?" He began but she interrupted him again.

   "Please, Ben. Give me an answer," she pleaded.

   "All right." He heaved a sigh. "I'll answer it. I wouldn't understand how you of all women could behave in such a way. That's my answer."

   "So it would make a difference to how you feel about me?"

   "Yes. It would, a great difference," he snapped and turning away from her he strode to the ladder that went up to the wheelhouse and began to climb it.